( There are 2 pages of images ) ( use tiny arrow at the top to seethe second page once you've checked out the main page ones at the bigger size )

Not a true Chicago style by any means, but I did my best, I didn't have that awesome cheese that I saw in DKM's images, and that must be amazing, I hardly had much cheese at all. Anyway all in all ? - I'm very pleased with it ! , each slice must weight about a good pound !

I recently made a couple of "mini" deep-dish pizzas based on DKM's recipe posted at the Main Menu on the website. Since DKM's recipe is based on using a 15-inch, 2 1/4-inch deep pan, and since I have a set of mini deep-dish pans that are roughly 6 1/4 inches in diameter, with a sloping side around 7/8-inch, I had to reverse engineer and downsize DKM's numbers to get to an amount of dough that I would need to make two deep-dish pizzas in my mini pans.

Specifically. knowing that DKM's recipe produces around 36 ounces of dough and that the pan used by DKM for the dough is 15 inches in diameter and 2 1/4 inches deep, and that DKM runs the dough all the way up the side of the pan, I calculated the thickness factor (0.1274) for DKM's dough and applied it to my case. I calculated the total surface area of my 6 1/4-inch pan, including the bottom and the side, and multiplied that number by 0.1274 to get the amount of dough that I would need for one of my mini pans. That came to roughly 6 ounces for one pan, or roughly 12 ounces for two pans. (I'd be happy to lay out the math in greater detail or to calculate the amount of dough for any other size deep-dish pan, given the diameter and depth of the pan. For example, I have a 12-inch, 2 1/4-inch deep pan also, and I calculated that I would need about 25 ounces of dough following DKM's recipe.) Using DKM's baker's percentages, I calculated the amount of each ingredient I would need. (For those who are interested, I can show the math for these calculations also).

I followed DKM's recipe as closely as I could. The only problem I experienced was kneading in the oil in my stand mixer. This was more of a problem of trying to knead too small an amount of dough in the mixer, and it was easily remedied by transferring the contents of the bowl to my food processor to incorporate the oil, following which I returned the dough to my mixer to finish kneading.

Since I had two mini deep-dish pans, I decided to use slightly different ingredients. The first pizza included the 6-in-1 tomatoes (right from the can), a little bit of Penzeys pizza seasonings, a fresh mozzarella cheese, provolone cheese, Italian sausage (raw), pepperoni, diced sweet red pepper, and freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. The second pizza was nearly the same as the first one but included a deli (County Line) mozzarella cheese instead of the fresh, dried oregano and dried basil instead of the Penzeys, some crushed red pepper, and a finely diced clove of garlic. The two pizzas were baked at the same time, but rather than putting the pans on the lowest rack of the oven as called for by the recipe, I put them on the middle rack. I also lowered the oven temperature a bit so that the pizzas would not burn before they were baked, and I baked the pizzas for about 15 minutes total.

The results were wonderful. As between the two pizzas, I can't say that one was any better than the other, although the pizza with the fresh garlic had a little extra zip, which I liked. If I were to change anything, I might be inclined to mix some nice San Marzanos in with the 6-in-1 tomatoes to soften the 6-in-1's a bit. I would also like to try adding a little bit of egg-shade or similar yellow food-grade dye to see if I can recapture the imagery I retain of the days when I lived in the Chicago area and ate the "colored" versions of Chicago deep-dish pizzas.

The photo below shows the two mini deep-dish pizzas in relation to one of the pans. The one on the left has the Penzeys seasonings and the one on the right has the dried oregano and basil, which is noticeable in the photo.

I wonder what I am doing wrong...... the dough I see here in that last image looks great also, and I can see the dough must have been as high as the top of the dish when you made that pizza, and - the dough did NOT sink down the side of the pan.....

what the heck am I doing wrong ? whenever I try this, ( I'll get the dough up high on the edge, but after a few seconds, the dough contracts enough so the dough starts sliding down the side of the pan, and it ends up just sitting in the bottom of the pie plate

Logged

Pizzamaker, Rib Smoker, HomeBrewer, there's not enough time for a real job.

As I indicated in another thread, on Deven's technique, the dough I made did slide and shrink a bit. I just let it rest for a few minutes and then continued with the pressing operation. Also, when I started adding the ingredients, especially the cheeses and meats, I kept pressing the side of the dough up to keep it from sliding down. The baking also caused the crust to rise above the edge of the pan due to expansion during baking. As I indicated in the other thread, I have read that the shrinking problem can be alleviated or minimized by using shortening in the pan rather than oil. However, I stuck with the oil since I wanted to follow DKM's recipe as closely as possible. Otherwise, I would never know what his recipe can deliver.

I'd be happy to work out the dough ball weights for different sized pans. However, I discovered that deep-dish pans come in a wide variety of diameters and heights. Most stacking deep-dish pans come in diameters from 6 to 18 inches with side portions 2 1/4-inches high. Nesting deep-dish pans often have 1 1/2 to 2 inch high side portions, and some have half-size diameters. It might make most sense to assume 2 1/4-inch sides (straight) to keep things simple. (My mini pans are technically cutter pans, but I use them for deep-dish purposes; the math calculations work the same way in any event.)

Each of the dough ball weight calculations will also have to specify the amount of flour to be used (the 100% baker's percent figure) so that one can use the rest of the baker's percents to calculate the weights of the other ingredients. I think that may be the easiest way to go.

I will work out the dough ball weights for pans from 6 to 18 inches in diameter and 2 1/4-inch high sides, as well as the corresponding weights of flour. Will that be OK?

I have presented below the dough ball weights and flour weights for DKM's deep-dish dough recipe as scaled for use with different size deep-dish pans, from 6 to 18 inches, and assuming that the height of the side portions for all of the pans is 2 1/4 inches. In the calculations, I made adjustment for the fact that the dough on the bottom of the pan uses up about 1/4 inch of the height of the side portion of each pan. In doing this, I calculated a more accurate thickness factor for DKM's recipe, 0.1329, which is a fairly standard thickness for a thick crust.

What I basically did to come up with the data presented below was to calculate the surface area of the bottom of a pan that is to be covered with dough and the surface area of the side portion for that pan that is to be covered with dough, add those two numbers together, and multiply the sum by the DKM thickness factor, 0.1329. I came up with a simple mathematical expression to do this and reduced it further to an even simpler expression that can be handled much easier on a calculator. That expression is

W = (4 + R) x Pi x R x TF,

where W is the weight of the dough ball to be used for the selected pan, R is the radius of the pan, Pi (the Greek letter) is 3.14, and TF is the thickness factor (in our case, 0.1329). The above expression works only for pans with side portions of 2 1/4 inches in height. If a 2 inch or 1 1/2 inch pan were to be used, the thickness factor would remain the same (as long as DKM's recipe is used), but the dough ball weights would have to be recalculated (they would go down). (I can provide the calculations in any such instance for those who are interested).

To determine the weight of flour in each of the dough ball weights I calculated, I divided the weight of each dough ball (W) by 2.05. I calculated this number by adding the percentages (divided by 100) of all the ingredients in DKM's recipe, specifically,

A point that should be kept in mind in using the dough weights listed below is that the bake times and other factors (oven rack positioning, etc.) will have to be adjusted just as I did when I made my mini deep-dish pizzas.

Here's the data (Steve: You may want to round out the numbers to the nearest tenth, but I will leave that up to your discretion):

The flour weight numbers given above assume that users know how to use baker's percents and will thus know to multiply the flour weight by each of the other percentages of the other ingredients in DKM's recipe to get the specific weights for those other ingredients.

My pleasure. You have just seen another side of my anal nature . As they say, the devil is in the detail.

The data also shows it isn't necessary to make a big batch of dough when you only want or need a little. But it wouldn't be possible were it not for baker's percents, which I learned from reading the writings of the master, Tom Lehmann. You could work backwards but you would have to collect a lot of information, put on your math hat, and act like Sherlock Holmes . That's OK too. It's part of the challenge.